On The Banks of the Chattahoochee
Phenix City: The Wickedest City in America by Edwin Strickland and Gene Wortsman Phenix City book on Archive.org Chapter One: On The Banks of the Chattahoochee River Phenix City, Alabama, is unlike any other city in the United States. Chicago, Illinois has its Loop. New Orleans has its French Quarter. Kansas City, New York, New York, El Paso, Texas, Miami, Florida, San Francisco, California and Biloxi all have their areas of evil.In Phenix City there was, until recently, no border between the good and the bad. It was all bad. The downtown area was an unending series of night clubs, honky tonks, clip joints, B-girl bars, whorehouses, and gambling casinos. Every highway leading into the city was lined with the institutions, and they were scattered through-out he residential districts. You could climb a tall tree, spit Phenix City: The Wickedest City in America in any direction, and where the wind wafted the splutter, there you would find organized crime, corruption, sex and utter depravity. No attempt was made to conceal illegal activities. The brightly lighted neons beckoned twenty-four hours a day, across from the Courthouse and a block from City Hall. Nobody, said fat-faced, quiet-talking Sheriff H. Ralph Matthews, Jr., complained to him. Lacking such objections, I In- iM)od the sheriff was unable to see that the law was being broken. He claimed to see no wrong in permitting the top commander of the gambling hierarchy, John Hoyt Shepherd, to conduct his widespread businesses from the sheriff's own office. Shepherd used the office as though it belonged to him, dispatching orders to his flunkies throughout Russell County, of which Phenix City is the county seat. This close comradeship between the law-breakers and the men sworn to uphold the law was both brazen and bold. In other cities where payoffs flourish, the police maintain a front of righteous indignation when accused of protecting the racketeers. In Phenix City, lawmen, while denying payoffs, openly fraternized with the gangs. Chief Deputy Sheriff Albert Fuller was hospitalized in July,1954- One of his first visitors was Tommv (Dynamite) Capps, a lower echelon thug. Circuit Judge John B, Hicks was known to sun himself on the Courthouse steps, surrounded by members of the underworld regime. Connections, like the tentacles of a giant octupus, reached into other counties as well as into the marbled halls of state office buildings in Montgomery, Alabama site of the capitol. Nowhere was the relationship of gambler to public official closer than between Shepherd and the city clerk, Jimmie Putnam a former plumber. The two owned a building in which the Steak House Cafe operated. Putnam sold his one-half interest in The Pines, a motel and restaurant near Opelika, Alabama, to Shepherd, for $1 and other worth-while considerations. Federal tax stamps indicated that these "other worrhwhile considerations" amounted to $14,000. Here was a town where, in November, 1954, only one notice appeared on the outside bulletin board at the Coun- house. It was dated October 29, 1951, and signed by William E. Davis, then Collector of Internal Revenue for the State of Alabama. According to the notice, the Revenue Act of 1951 had changed some taxes and added others. The latter included: "Wagering taxes— 10% excise and an occupational tax on wagering." Of 238 federal gambling stamps issued in Alabama the first year after the enactment of this tax, all but fifteen were purchased by persons in Phenix City. A thread of cruelty and brutality which kept the citizens in a state of intimidation twined through the entire picnire. Houses were burned or bombed, people were assaultcd, gang warfare blazed on the streets. Individuals, once in the clutches of the iaw could expect no mercy. The case of Otis Lamb, a Negro youth, illustrates the manner in which police meted out justice. Otis and two companions, in October and November of 1953, burglarized two stores. In the first burglary they stole a pistol which Otis used in the second to hold up a store manager. Otis was arrested and deputies demanded that he produce the weapon. Otis got them a pistol all right. Here is his statement, obtained by Alabama National Guardsmen, in October, 1954 on how it happened: "I was beat so much while in the jail that I told them I would go to the home of my uncle and get the pistol," the statement read. "I was taken there, where I stole his pistol and gave it to them; it was a pistol similar to the one we actually used. Aaron Smith, John Pitts, Ben Scroggins, and AIbert Fuller was all present when I was stripped of all my clothes. and beat with a big belt that had a silver dollar in the big end. AIbert Fuller stood by with his pistol in his hand while I was being beat. I could not get back on the bed, and they called Dr. Floyd to the jail to see about me. Ben Scroggins did most of the whipping of me. A jail-break was rumored and Jailer Ben Clark beat me about this jail-break rumor." Otis pleaded guiltv to the crimes and was sentenced to six years. With the exception of Dr. Seth Floyd, a city com- missioner, and Scroggins, an agent for the Alcohol Beverage Control Board of Alabama, the men present during Lamb's beating were all deputy sheriffs. Another Negro accused Scroggins of lashing him and his small son, and said Scroggins returned later to offer him fifty dollars not to report the incident. Soldiers were also subject to mistreatment. Two servicemen were arrested by Phenix City police on February 28, they were fined $11.50 each, without a hearing and being told what charges had been placed against them. One Gl had one hundred and thirty-two dollars re- turned to him from his original hundred and fifty, while the second serviceman received only one dollar back out of the thirty-five he had in his pocket when arrested. In the illicit industries, lottery was the biggest money maker. Following came other forms of gambling, such as parlor machines, and poker. Prostitution and dope were close behind. Illegal whisky and beer sales marked up huge profits. Corrupt practices and payoffs could not be accurately measured, but they played a large part in the financial trans- actions of the community. So, too, did abortions and the sale of babies. Money paid for legal advice by the gamblers and crooks ran into thousands of dollars. Beer sold for fifteen cents and sandwiches cost a nickel. Gambling started at one penny for lotteries and reached to the sky for a limit. Election votes were sold for a bottle of whisky, a promise of aid, a pat on the back, or cold cash, as high as one hundred dollars a vote. Anything that was against the law could be bought, borrowed, stolen, or other- wise obtained in this little city of 23,000 souls. Women were on the market for ten dollars up, the price depending upon whether it was payday for the soldiers sta- tioned across the Chattahoochee River at Fort Benning, Geor- gia, After paying his money a man never knew when a whorehouse pimp might try to toss him outstde before he was finished. Everyone who had dealings with the city seemed to know what was going on, except the officials who were paid TO know. A man who had trained as a paratrooper at Fort Benning returned to Phenix on his way to Florida. He visited the haunts he had known as a GI. He saw and heard the clack of the one-armed bandits, the shuffle of the cards, the roll of the dice, the laugh of the B-girls, the enticements of the prostitutes. He went down to City Hall and reported his findings. The cops were flabbergasted. Here was a new and serious matter. They summoned Willis M. (Buddy) Jowers, the night chief who ran the department with the blessing of bis uncle, Mayor Klmer Reese. The visitor told Jowers of his observations. "Do you want to swear out a warrant against anybody?" Jowers asked. "No, sir." "You're sure of that?" "No, sir, I just wanted to tell you what was going on." Jowers turned co his officers and together they discussed the stuation. Their decision was quick and firm. They jailed the visitor for drunkenness. Even though a large percentage of the entire city's popu- lation engaged in illegal activities, the actual volume of participants is smaller than in a large city such as Chicago. The biggest wheels in Phenix City could not match the $2,000,000 weekly Al Capone raked in from his crimes. But the take was amazingly large, hitting up to many millions annually during World War II years. The biggest net income on illegitimate enterprises for an individual for any one year probably never to- totaled more than $300,000 to $1,500,000, several of the top grossed much more. Careful, lawful investments by businessmen like Jimmy Matthews, number one team mate of ^hcfihcrd, greatly increased personal incomes. Phenix City siphoned off about $2,000,000 a month from Fort Benning. Extra money flowed in regularly from Alabama, Georgia, Florida and Mississippi. Big time gamblers chartered planes to Phenix City to test their skill in the highly publicised 'Bama Club, where playing often was by appointment only. Unlike larger cities which have grown famous through sin, Phenix City was no mecca for tourists. Nor did it attract conventions, or out-of-state buyers, shopping for large con- tracts. It depended on the nearby soldiers and transients, drawing on nearby states for people to play its lotteries and patronize its back rooms. When business was at its best, on paydays and week ends, Phenix City functioned like a big corporation. Play-for-pay girls- imported from out-of-state, extra croupiers rolled die dice, whisky flowed like a mountain stream after a strong thundershower. The city even had its own factory for making marked cards and loaded dice. But teen-agers had no place to eat and dance. A man had no place to drive his family on a pretty day, unless he crossed the river into Georgia or headed into the open country. Phenix City was the only city in the state where hquor was sold from quart bottles. Every other city and county was' forced to sell shots from miniatures, opened and poured in the presence of the customer. An extra profit was realized in serving from the quart bottles. The whisky could be diluted and the bartender could control the amount of whisky in each drink served. No practice was too vile. Unconsumed beer was re- bottled and re-sold. Drinks were spiked. Customers were knocked on the head and their wallets lifted. House men would take all the coin a soldier had, at a crooked dice table, then direct the youth next door to a company-owned pawnshop where he could pick up a spot of cash for his boots, his watch, or his underwear. Inevitably the boy re- turned to the table to lose again. If a client got rowdy, a casino tough would toss him outside, usually into the waiting arms of the police who would book him for being drunk and disorderly. The Chattahoochee River became a dumping ground for dead bodies, the kind with cement-encased feet. Killings went unsolved. Complaints from honest citizens went un- heeded. You'd have to search a long time to find a home with green grass growing in the front yard. Dirt roads could be located by a turn of the head. The city jail smelled like the garbage dump and the county jail smelled like the city jail. Some citizens had a reply, when strangers asked why they tolerated conditions. Tlie first thing the Pilgrims did upon landing at Plymouth Rock, they would explain, was to get down on their knees and pray. The second was to conduct a lottery and parcel out land on which each family would make its home. So lotteries, or gambling, was an old Amer- ican custom and therefore permissible. Phenix City officials claimed the residents got the kind of government they wanted and that the city was supported by the activities. Two points dispute this generalization. Any time acitizen expressed displeasure, the mob paid him a visit. And an audit of city finances proved that gambling contributed • Htl\ SS'0,000 a year to the city's income from licenses and Another reason many residents failed to complain was that theywere a part of the corruption. Any family, now in its second generation in Phenix City, stands a good chance of having some member mixed up with the rowdy element, A relative of one crime-fighter sold bootleg whisky. The brother of another ran a gambling house. Wickedness was so widespread that Major General Walter "Crack" Hanna, Adjutant General of Alabama, upon moving the National Guard into the county to clean it up in 1954, said that every law enforcement agency which had authority within the area became tainted by the rottenness. While Phenix City was recognized as a pesthole, few citizens besides ranking bosses had any idea of how broad were its effects, how threatening to the rest of Alabama. This became apparent only after Albert Patterson, Democratic nominee for attorney general as "Man Against Crime," was gunned down by assassins' bullets on June 18, 1954. Four months later, after the National Guard had filled the jails with gamblers and crooks and after juries had sen- tenced dozens of citizens for law violations, county com- issioners were still were shaking their heads over the "unnecessary lllV.." " The National Guard came in here full of apprehensions," said one of them, Commissioner J. B. Parkman. "They had just heard a lot of propaganda, They carried their guns like they were waiting for a rabbit to jump. They could have done just as much good with those dusters like you use to brush your Sunday suit." The gamblers, according to another commissioner, "were brought up in all this," and didn't know it was wrong. The history of Phenix City is swathed in turbulence. Rec- ords indicate that one of the last battles of the War Between the States was fought on April 16, 1865, in an area then know n as Girard in Russell County. Large sections of the community were burned by Wilson's Raiders. Girard united with the City of Brownville and in 1889 the combined region was renamed Phenlx City after the legendary bird of Egyptian mythology which destroys itself every five hundred years and Is born again from the ashes. The land which Phenix City now occupies was part of tlie ' original State of Alabama when the state was founded onj December 12, 1819. It is southeast of Birmingham, on the western bank of the muddy Chattahoochee River which separates it from Columbus, Georgia. Part of the county was in neighboring Lee County where it remained from 1866 until September 30, 1932, when the land was returned to Russell County. Nobody wanted it. Russell County was the lost permanent home of the Creek Indian Nation. Thar section once known as Girard acquired the unofficial name "Sodom" because it became a refuge for a lawless element. Numerous engagements occurred between unfriendly In- dians and determined, aggressive white settlers. Whites would massacre Indians and the red men would retaliate with fierce reprisals. When the county was named, it was for a famous Indian fighter. Colonel Gilbert Christian Russell. From the date of its founding in 1932, modern Phenix City has been clutched in the hands of the same few families. Dr. Ashby Floyd was on the first five-member city council and his son, Dr. Seth Floyd, has followed in his footsteps. Homer I. Cobb, Sr., an original member, ruled the city with an iron hand during his term as mayor. His son. Homer, Jr., is not a commissioner but has recently been named to the hospital board. C. L. Gullait preceded his son, A. L. Gullart, on the riding junta. Dr. Clyde A. Knowles, Jr., who won his seat as an anti-machine candidate in 1954, is the son of a former commission member. The fifth man on council was I. I. Moses, now an insurance man. hij, c .1 book on what made Phenix City tick; how ambi- imscnipulous gangsters and politicians plotted to . .iturffl of the entire State of AJabama; how they ran >hi i( I mpirc; and how the Alabama National Gnard, with ill. ri.l tif conscieiitious citizens both private and public, ! I nut the crooks for a brief spell. This book is more concerned with Phenix City as it was before the clean-up, rather than with the various phases and accomplishments of the scrubbing itself. For this reason, the work of such men as Circuit Judge Walter B. Jones, Ahiiujinmery; Solicitors George C. Johnson of Athens, Conrad I'outii i)f Columbiana, Julian Bland of Cullman, and James McDowell of Phenix City, and the new Attorney General, John Patterson, is largely omitted. Much of the information comes from top-secret files, never before revealed. The hlth which made Phenix the wickedest city in America began to decompose on June 18, 1954, a few minutes after 9 PM. At that moment, Albert Patterson, was shot and killed. Category:Columbus, Georgia metropolitan area Category:Phenix City, Alabama Category:Gangsters